Renjeaux

42.1+2 Renjeaux Listens to Planet Earth+Girls On Film, from Duran Duran – Duran Duran

For our 42nd cool album, we’re listening to Duran Duran’s titular debut album from 1981. This album was one of the milestones of the New Romantic movement, which grew up out of New Wave. NOTE: we are listening to the “Harvest Release” of this album. It is the first U.S. release, and opens with the “Night Version” of Planet Earth.

We open this cool album with a couple of ground-breaking tracks. The first track, “Planet Earth” sets the scene for a whole new movement in music and style, the New Romantic movement. It’s a seriously cool jam, and the Night Version’s extended intro gets us warmed up really nicely. Track 2 is the worldwide hit “Girls on Film,” which, in addition to being a statement on the exploitation of women, the video was banned in the UK and restricted to late-night-only showings on the then-brand-new MTV in the U.S.

41.4-6 Renjeaux Listens to Foreign Affair+Taurus 3+Shadow on the Wall, from Mike Oldfield – Crises

The 41st stop in our cool-album-listening journey is Mike Oldfield’s eighth studio album, 1983’s “Crises.”

We close out this album with the final three tracks: “Foreign Affair,” “Taurus 3,” and “Shadow on the Wall.” Please listen to Taurus 3! But please do NOT listen to “Shadow on the Wall…”

41.2+3 Renjeaux Listens to Moonlight Shadow+In High Places, from Mike Oldfield – Crises

The 41st stop in our cool-album-listening journey is Mike Oldfield’s eighth studio album, 1983’s “Crises.”

While side A of this album is one long piece, side B consists of five short songs. We open side B with Oldfield’s biggest-selling single, “Moonlight Shadow,” then rise up with “In High Places,” a collaboration with Yes’s Jon Anderson.

41.1 Renjeaux Listens to Crises, from Mike Oldfield – Crises

The 41st stop in our cool-album-listening journey is Mike Oldfield’s eighth studio album, 1983’s “Crises.”

The opening, title track is all of side A. It’s over 20 minutes long, comprises several movements, with varying themes and variations, and contains some of the most sublime — as well as some of the most annoying — music that Oldfield created up to this point.

40.9 Renjeaux Listens to Whispers, from Visage – The Anvil

It’s our 40th anniversary! And we’re celebrating by pumpin’ it with the second Visage album, 1982’s “The Anvil.” This album is a pretty significant change from their first album, which takes a more funk and disco turn, while retaining a serious romanticism (and lots of whispering).

We close out this cool album with what could be the closer of a compilation album of cool instrumental closing tracks, track 9, “Whispers.” We hope you groove with us until next time…

25.01 Renjeaux Listens to That Was Then But This Is Now, from ABC – Beauty Stab

In the 25th volume of our album-listening adventure, we take on ABC’s surprising second album, 1983’s Beauty Stab. In this first episode, we make a Big Announcement (we now have 100 YouTube subscribers and will be holding a celebratory live stream on Sunday, April 18th!), and then we listen to the album’s first track, That Was Then But This Is Now.

Yes, coming soon

While Dell and I are having a lot of fun listening to cool albums and producing our show, YouTube keeps blocking many of our episodes because of copyright infringement. For example, just today, our episode 16 Peter Gabriel Us show has been blocked in the USA, but not blocked in the UK. Luckily, Vimeo doesn’t give us any heartache at all, so we’ve been posting the YouTube-blocked shows there. So many, in fact, that we’ve decided to post all of our shows on both sites, whether YouTube blocks them or not.

A couple of other benefits of Vimeo over YouTube is that Vimeo doesn’t compress videos as much as YouTube, so viewers enjoy higher quality; and you can embed Vimeo videos on other web sites, with indexing so we can “bookmark” album tracks. So, more incentive for us to get Renjeaux.com going!

So stay tuned: soon you’ll be able to jam with us to our favorite albums here on our own web site!